A policy is the unit of “delete these documents after this long”. You’ll typically build the first few policies during setup, then leave day-to-day editing to your super-users.
The policy editor is organised into General, Criteria, Approval, and Advanced tabs.
Setting
What it does
Name / Description
Identification for the policy. Agree a naming convention up front
Priority
When more than one policy matches a document, the highest-priority policy decides the outcome. Document the priority scheme per tenant
Enabled
Leave off until the policy has been simulated and signed off
Retention period
How long documents must be kept — years, months, and days — before they become eligible. Works together with the criteria to decide what to target
Grace period
A reprieve window, in days, after a document is tagged and before it becomes eligible for deletion. This is the window in which a document can still be rescued
Deletion method
Soft delete (recoverable, default) or Permanent purge (irreversible). Only use Permanent purge when a regulator requires content to be destroyed
Activity reset actions
Document activities that restart the retention clock for a tagged document — viewed, modified, reindexed, keywords updated, notes added, new revision, workflow started, exported. Use these so documents in active use aren’t deleted
Requires approval
Forces a human gate before any deletion under the policy. Recommended for any policy that hits more than a handful of documents per cycle
Approver groups
The user groups whose members can approve or reject deletions for this policy. Map to existing user groups
Criteria
The matching expression — see below
When Requires approval is on, always configure at least one approver group. A policy that requires approval but has no approver groups will accept approval from anyone who holds the approvals permission, which defeats the gate.
The criteria editor builds a matching expression from these building blocks, either in a visual tree editor or as JSON. Combine them with AND, OR, and NOT groups.
Building block
Matches
Document type
A specific document type
Document type group
Every type belonging to a group
Keyword
A keyword value, compared with: equals, not equals, contains, starts with, ends with, greater/less than (or equal to), and is empty / is not empty
Date
The document date or stored date — an absolute date (2020-01-01) or a relative one (for example, today − 7 years)
Last activity
The most recent activity — viewed, modified, printed, emailed, retrieved, or created — older than a threshold, optionally limited to specific activity types
All documents
Every active document, with optional document-type or group exclusions
An All documents rule must include at least one exclusion — a rule that would match every document with no exclusions is rejected, so you can’t accidentally target the whole archive.Validation runs as you build. Warnings (for example, “this matches every active document”) surface inline; hard errors block saving.
Every save creates a new version of the policy, and previous versions are kept so you can see how a policy changed over time.When an edit changes the criteria, the editor asks how to treat documents the policy is already tracking:
Preserve existing document states — documents already tagged continue under the new version. Safe default.
Re-evaluate all documents — drop the policy’s currently tagged documents and let the next processing cycle re-tag against the new criteria.
Documents that have already moved past Tagged — pending approval, approved, deleted, rescued, excluded, or quarantined — are never re-evaluated either way, so an in-flight approval batch or a deletion history is never disturbed.
Run a simulation before enabling any new or materially changed policy. Simulations are read-only — they tag nothing and delete nothing.A simulation reports:
The total number of documents the policy would tag
A sample you can spot-check
A flag when the sample was capped
When the sample is capped, read the total to judge real impact, not the size of the sample. Review both before enabling the policy.
